Sunday, April 24, 2016

So, back in December when we visited NYC we ate a lotta, lotta food but one of our favourites was the humungous slice of artichoke pizza from the popular Basille's Pizza in Chelsea. It cost $5, was the size of my head and was simply delicious!

Naturally, we've been craving a slice ever since and after looking at a few different recipes online we chose bits and pieces of them to make the easiest artichoke pizza that we could and it worked a treat.

Ingredients:

Pizza base

or

White flour with yeast - simply add water, oil and salt

3 tablespoons of olive oil

2 cloves of chopped garlic

Parmesan cheese

Mozzarella cheese

Frozen (or fresh) artichoke hearts

Fresh spinach

I made my own base with shop bought pizza flour. I added half the amount of water to flour, plus 3 teaspoons of olive oil and a few pinches of salt. I wanted a deep pan style so I kneaded the dough twice over an hour and also left it to rise once i'd added the toppings. In future, I'm going to try a thinner crust and not leave it to rise at all.

So first...

Before adding your toppings, add your garlic to the olive oil and mix. You also need to chop the artichoke hearts into quarters and drain to keep from getting a soggy pizza.

Once you've prepped the oil and artichokes, lay out your pizza base and spread the garlicky oil all over it. Sprinkle parmesan cheese over the base and cover that with grated mozzarella. Cheese galore!

Add the artichoke pieces and spinach leaves and then, yes, cover with another handful of mozzarella cheese and if you really want to, another sprinkle of parmesan.

Season with salt and pepper and put your pizza in the oven... medium/high for 10 minutes until the cheese is bubbling and brown.

It's certainly no Basille's... I think I'd need about 3x the cheese but it definitely curbed our cravings!